Monday, November 30, 2015

Read Mr. James Abiodun Faleke's letter to the All Progressives Congress (APC) Chairman,
John Odigie-Oyegun rejecting his nomination as Alhaji Yahaya Bello's running mate in the December 5 Supplementary
Governorship election in Kogi State:

“Re: My Purported Nomination As
Deputy Governor”

“Information at my disposal from the National Secretary of our
party, the All Progressives Congress, and my telephone conversation with your
good self, confirmed to me that the party had issued INEC form and submitted my
name as running mate to Alhaji Yahaya Bello in the forthcoming unusual and
strange supplementary election scheduled for 5th December, 2015, covering 91
polling units in Kogi State to elect a “supplementary governor”.

“Mr. Chairman, you may recall that an election was conducted on
the 21st November 2015, in
which I was running mate to the late Prince Abubakar Audu: I therefore remain
fully committed to that joint ticket which received the blessings of the party
leadership, including your good self, evident from your attendance at the
campaign rallies to ensure total victory for your great party through which the
people of Kogi State massively and overwhelmingly voted for us.

For the second time in her existence, Apple Inc, the company founded by the two Steves (Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak) has been certified as the world’s most valuable company with a market capitalization of $772 Billion.

As I read the news on various news
platform, I was struck by the comparisons of Apple with Nigeria and
lessons we as a people could learn from this intellectual behemoth.

The first comparison would be that Apple
is a company built on ideas. So for instance, while an American company like
Ford is an epitome of the success of the industrial revolution age, Apple on
the other hand is the poster boy for the knowledge worker age.
And nothing depicts this as dramatically as the fact that the former most
valuable company, ExxonMobil, has a market capitalization that is only half of
Apple’s ($382 Billion).

The first lesson for Nigeria then
becomes that if our hopes for the growth of our economy is dependent on oil,
ExxonMobil, the biggest oil company in the world, is a glaring example that we
will continue to play second fiddle to those nations whose hope for the future
is based on knowledge. Oil gave birth to ExxonMobil, knowledge gave birth to
Apple. Go figure!

And when you look at the math, you would see
that the numbers are preaching to Nigeria in a way that words cannot.
For one thing, Apple, today employs 115,000 people who together are paid more
than all the approximately 40 million employed people in Nigeria make in a year.

The above should probably put Nigerian
Governors on notice that their plan to reduce the minimum wage from ₦18,000 is
an intellectually lazy idea that will cost them more than it would cure them.

Secondly, in 2015 Apple has made $215 Billion so far. This figure looks set to
increase with the expected sales boost from Christmas. In comparison, Nigeria has made 10% of
that amount in the same period.

“All truth passes through three stages. First,
it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as
being self-evident.”

– Arthur Schopenhauer

“I’m for truth, mo matter who tells it. I’m for
justice, no matter who it’s for or against.”

– Malcom
X

With
trepidation, I have been watching the subtle descent into dictatorship by the
administration of Muhammadu Buhari. I have been watching with disgust President
Buhari’s war against freedom of speech. I am very concerned about desperate
attempts by President Buhari and his sentries to muzzle the voice of self
determination. I am very upset that a government of All Progressive Congress
that claimed to love freedom is engaged in deliberate subjugation of innocent
citizens who happens to have different views about the state of the polity.

*Nnamdi Kanu

I am very
concerned that an innocent man is being denied his freedom. I am scared that an
innocent man is being subjected to illegal detention. I am not comfortable that
an innocent man is being tried for desiring freedom for his people. I am very
disturbed that a non-violent man is being inflicted with unwarranted and
undeserved travails. I am worried that a lot of unwary observers who are not
properly schooled in the elementary tenets of democracy are vilifying an
innocent man.

Nnamdi Kanu
is an innocent man. He has not committed any crime to make him deserve the kind
of treatment being meted out to him. You do not have to like Nnamdi Kanu. You
do not have to agree with him or his desires for his people. But no one has the
right to deny him his fundamental human right to be free. No one has the right
to deny him the right to self-determine his destiny as he sees it or wants it.
No one has the right to shut him up because they do not like what he is saying
or because they feel threatened by what he is saying.

Mr. Kanu’s
exploits are known to all and sundry. His desire is to have a homeland
for his people. His desire is to free his people from the shackles of Nigeria. His
desire is to see his people get to the promised land of Biafra.
His dream is to see his people in control of their own destiny. His desire is
to have a say in who governs him and his people. His desire is to ensure that
no oligarchy or neo-oligarchic interests within the Ndigbo homeland is able to
hold his people in bondage. His desire is to be able to water the tree of
liberty for his people. There is nothing criminal in or about all this.

In all
this, he has only employed semantics. He has only deployed sophistry. He had
only appropriated the airwaves to be able to reach his people. He has not
acquired arms. He has not killed anybody. He has not declared any armed war
against anyone or organization. The only war he has ever declared is against
the continued subjugation, enslavement and denigration of his Igbo people. It
is a war of idea. A war of and for the minds of his people to see what he is
seeing, to desire what he is desiring, to dream what he is dreaming. And he is
doing that peacefully. He has been able to make his case to the majority of
Ndigbo and the youths of that nation who are indeed the future of Biafra.

He is
mobilizing his people to engage in the struggle to be free from their
enslavement by the NigerianState. He is making a
clarion call for his people to stand up for their rights and self determine
their destinies, or collective destiny. He has been innovative. He has been
peaceful. He has been determined. He has been methodical. He has been
deliberate. He has been consistent. He has persevered. And he is making
sacrifices. There is nothing criminal in or about this.

THE current pro-Biafra wind blowing across
the length and breadth of south- eastern Nigeria and some contiguous parts
of the south-south geo-political zone reminds me of the timely warning of the
Emir of Kano, Sanusi Lamido. Not too long ago, the banker- turned traditional
ruler was reported to have cautioned the nation on the grave danger in failing
to pay proper attention to the worries of Ndigbo, noting that this generation
of Igbo youths would likely dare the Nigerian state in an unimaginable manner since
they neither suffer from a hang-over of the Nigeria/Biafra civil war – having
not witnessed it, nor do they harbor any memories of that darkest page of
Nigeria’s story book.

I would like to add that the present crop
of Igbo youths grew up with a be- ware-of-the-enemy-within mindset, a siege
mentality and a vanquished orientation, all of which combine to leave them in
highly inflammable state. To make matters worse, the environment where they
were nurtured was (and still is) rich in lack, rich in deprivation and rich in
hostility. It is little wonder, therefore, that they willingly received the
strange dogmatic exhortations of an Nnamdi Kanu and his Radio Biafra as food
(holy sacrament, if you like) to their drained souls.

Elsewhere, I had argued that who I see on
the streets clutching Biafra flag are not Biafran patriots – and they are not
Biafra enthusiasts either; they are frustrated youths who are at war with a
system that appears irrevocably committed to shrinking their individual
prospects of survival and forecloses their chances to prosper.
Fortunately for them, the Radio Biafra hate ministrations capture, in
significant ways, both their corporate imagination and existential realities
whilst Nnamdi Kanu’s present duel with the law has offered them a window for
self-expression.

Far north of Nigeria, a
state governor directs all public officials to withdraw their children from
private schools and move them to government-owned ones. About the same time,
the celibate daughter of a former Vice-President just sworn-in as a
commissioner in one of the troubled north-eastern states forswears enormous
wages and allowances waiting for her. Later, a pressure group somewhere in a
state down south calls on the authorities to ban those in government from
travelling abroad for medicare, whether for therapy or for checkup. Let them do
it here in Nigeria.
Much earlier the nation’s Spartan president and his equally abstemious deputy
announce a cut in their pay.

*President and two of his ministers: Amaechi

and Fashola

It’s all in the air;
the change aura suggesting times have changed. It’s a lean dawn when you can’t
lean on government again. These are days that tell you a lean government is
itself seeking where to lay its own lean and languid head.

Let us comfort and
heal this land, battered and violated like a woman over the decades by
so-called lovers who have only milked her dry out of her beauty.

A diet of half
measures won’t deliver this broke and broken nation from the salivating and
insatiable palate of these public office holders and their fellow carrion
eaters.

In the run-up to
2015 general elections part of the campaign promises of the All Progressives’
Congress was a double assurance that should they have our votes and be voted
into power the abducted girls in the dead of the night from a school dormitory
at Chibok will be rescued and reunited with their families. This sounded
encouraging and thus drew the attention of Nigerians and the international
community.

The then federal
government under former President Jonathan was seen as none other than a
clueless regime that must be jettisoned at all costs and this was followed by
growing impatience as the nation waited anxiously for May 29 to send the
administration packing and as luck would have it this was achieved by
instrumentality of the ballot box in the general elections that took place on
March 28 this year.

*Oby Ezekwesili: What happened to the once very active Bring Back Our Girls Campaign?

‘Chibok girls’ as
they are fondly called was used to score cheap political points and so much
noise was made. The former President everyone would recall had his reservations
when the news of the ‘abductees’ first hit the nation’s airwaves. It soon made
news headlines and was widely reported by the world press and former President
Jonathan was given two options either he produces the girls which his ‘cluelessness’
has occasioned or immediately relinquishes his hold on power.

Several
demonstrations by Nigerians at home and in the Diaspora commenced to pressurize
President Jonathan to produce the abductees. I too was enraged in no small
measure against the seeming inaction of the former administration under
President Jonathan considering the agonizing pains the parents were passing
through over the sudden loss of their children to the devil-may-care jihadist
insurgents.

The All
Progressives’ Congress held tenaciously to this Chibok story and had everyone
taken in that gave them that magnetic pull. As luck would have it, the
elections were held which, reports say, they won by a landslide. Buhari assumed
the reign of power on May 29, 2015, and six calendar months on nothing has been
said about the Chibok girls or the efforts in place to rescue them from their
abductors and the story is gradually disappearing like a fading star in the
firmament.

The babel of voices
that trailed the abduction of the girls have suddenly become extinct and the
parent’s like receding hills have thinned out. Ah… this brings so many things
to the mind of this author. Could we have been fooled with the Chibok story by
a cast of neophyte actors to solicit for votes all in a bid to get to power?
Did they really deserve our votes? Life appears to be going increasingly uphill
in Nigeria since they took
over power about six months ago amid pleas for patience by the Nigerian regime
in Abuja and
this leaves me astounded in no small measure.

What about what
looked like sponsored protests at the period under sad review? Who were the
people whose services were retained? How much were they paid for this massive
fraud, hypocrisy, and a range of elaborate deceptions?

This writer can
infer that lies, deceit were designed on whose back they rode to power in that
nothing has been heard about the parents nor the relatives of the purported
abductees. Buhari who capitalized on the Chibok story to attract our votes has
suddenly gone as quiet as he could be. This is very disheartening!

Now the question
is: Were there ever abductees from a secondary grammar school dormitory at
Chibok? Why has the fiery noise eventually thinned out? Were the Chibok girls
mere non-existent spooks and phantoms, a mere hallucinatory, delusional fantasy
designed to bamboozle the generality of Nigerians in a criminal bid to solicit
for votes? We have a burning desire to know.

Iyoha John Darlington, a scholar, social activist, public
commentator on national and global issues writes from Turin, Italy.

No doubts, the dawn
of the Mohammadu Buhari Presidency has changed the corruption surge in Nigeria, even
as anti-corruption laws and institutions are still very weak and lacking in
both capacity and will to curb the spate.

*BuhariCorruption is unarguably Nigeria’s worst problem, every other problems including unemployment, sits on the trivet of corruption and all we urgently need is a serious government that is committed, beyond words, to the battle against the plague.

President Mohammadu Buhari’s promise to fight corruption during his campaigns and his anti-corruption pedigree certainly gave him majority of the votes that shot him to power as most Nigerians are eager to clear the global dent on our collective image and he needs to ensure he goes beyond mere declarations by strengthening all structures and institutions that can effectively wipe off corruption or at least reduce it.

Since his emergence as President, the only weapon that has been fighting corruption is simply his name. His name has become anti-corruption law, agency and court. Individuals, organisations and government agencies have adopted a culture of self-control; some people who had diverted public funds to their private vaults have been reported to have quietly returned the funds to government. Indeed, the Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai publicly said a former public officer, whom he didn't name, had contacted him to facilitate the return of money he stole while in government during Goodluck Jonathan’s presidency.

Sunday, November 29, 2015

The just concluded West African Power
Industry Convention (WAPIC 2015) event held from 23rd till 26th November 2015
at Eko Hotel and Suites, Lagos
was a strategic hub for stakeholders looking for collaboration and joint
solutions to the intractable challenges bedevilling the electrification of the
West African sub-region. The main focus was the status of the Nigerian Power
Sector reform. Some of the key conclusions from the event are highlighted below:

1. There
is an urgent need for the new Minister in charge of Power to put together a
team of technocrats with proven expertise to review the status of the power
sector reform with a view to establishing and possibly dismantling bottlenecks
in the entire value chain of generation, transmission and distribution of electricity
in Nigeria.
This team, which must be apolitical, will review existing laws, policies and
processes as they affect the dismal performance of the reform despite humongous
amount of investment in the last 20 years. Serving as a "system
architect", it will take a holistic view of the entire system from
end-to-end, ensuring synergies between parallel and hitherto conflicting
activities which have more often than not led to policy reversals and
summersaults creating thus far the volatility, uncertainty, complexity and
ambiguity experienced in the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry (NESI) to the
sheer embarrassment of all stakeholders.

2.To be
able to sustain NESI, there is an urgent need for a clear focus on localisation
and capacity development for the power sector work force by strictly
implementing the Nigerian Content development regulation, establishing a power
academy (university for the power sector) and apprenticeships that fit into the
National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs Levels 1-6), as well as provide funding for training and research
grants focusing on specific areas of need of NESI.

Saturday, November 28, 2015

Ekiti State Governor, Mr Ayodele Fayose has described the last six
months of President Mohammadu Buhari’s administration as that of “deceitful
change,” lamenting that the President was destroying the image of Nigeria and its
people for cheap international recognition.

*Gov shopping for foodstuff at a local

market

The governor, who also
described the claim by the Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, that the
ministry do not have details of any fund recovered from officials of the
immediate past government of Dr Goodluck Jonathan as a vindication of his
position that the President was not saying the truth, said Nigerians must ask
the President where the so-called looted fund was paid and who made the
payments.

He said:
“If the Ministry of Finance is not aware of any recovered fund, it
is either those who purportedly made the refund did so by loading
cash into Ghana-Must-Go bags and dropping the bags in the President’s
bedroom or the fund was lodged into the Central Bank without
records.

Speaking
through his Special Assistant on Public Communications and New Media, Lere
Olayinka, Governor Fayose said “the only
areas President Buhari has recorded tremendous achievements are areas of
political persecution, disobedience of court order and desperate bid to
turn the country to a one-party state as evident in the Kogi State election,
which the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), headed by
Buhari's kinsman staged managed and muddled up.”

''Aside
the 105 soldiers killed by Boko Haram, additional 34 soldiers were killed 2
days ago but it wasn't in the news''- Deji
Adeyanju.
I concur with Mr. Deji Adeyanju. The most
heartless and reprehensible thing that our government could have done is to
cover-up the fact that 105 of our soldiers were killed by Boko Haram a few days
ago. To do such a thing is simply evil.

A soldier ought to be honored in death and this is especially so if he dies in the course of doing his duty and fighting for his nation.The government has not only dishonored them by not acknowledging their sacrifice but they have also buried them in the wilderness like rabid dogs.

This is wickedness of the highest order and President Buhari, his Chief of Army Staff and his Minister of Defense should bury their heads in shame.

Anyone that buys the lie and propaganda that the 105 soldiers never died and that they are still alive is a compound fool or village idiot.

Will the military also deny the fact that a few days ago 34 of our soldiers were killed by Boko Haram? These boys died for their country. Why deny them?

I am outraged by the fact that a soldier will sacrifice his life for his country yet the citizens and authorities of that country don't even appreciate it.

Pictures of the dead bodies were posted on social media. Everyone in the military knows that those soldiers are dead. It is an open secret. Yet because government denies it so many people just choose to believe them.

The truth is that Boko Haram must have used chemical weapons in the attack.When you look at the pictures of the dead bodies this is obvious. It was probably mustard gas.

All we want from the military is the truth. If 105 soldiers were not killed then how many actually were?

The
current agitation for the unconditional release of the director of Radio
Biafra, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, and the resuscitation of the Biafra nation became
more intense after Kanu was arrested during his visit to Nigeria from the UK about a month ago. Before then,
the Nigerian government had nothing to worry about a rather distantly located
“pirate” radio station and whatever influence it may have been exerting on any
section of the country.

Because I recently wrote about Nnamdi Kanu and the Biafra dream, I would not have liked to be dragged into the issue of Biafra any longer. But after listening to my colleague Emma Agu addressing the Biafra issue on YouTube, I was obviously disturbed. Mr Agu and I worked in the defunct Nigerian Statesman newspaper in the early 1980s and I know that he is a respected veteran journalist.

I was disturbed because I know that the Biafra issue is not a matter anyone can conveniently wish away or easily dismiss with a wave of the hand. Biafra was a reality. It happened. And that is perhaps why, in his wisdom and foresight, the universally respected Igbo writer, Professor Chinua Achebe, wrote his last book and titled it “There was a Country”.

Indeed there was.

The Nigeria-Biafra war ended about 45 years ago. And if you take a cursory look at what is happening, you will find that the people demonstrating in Nigeria and Overseas about Biafra and Nnamdi Kanu are all below 45 years of age. Most of them were possibly born in the Biafran side of Nigeria during the war. Their birth certificates say they are Biafran citizens. Those of us who live in Europe and America know what that means. We know the value and importance of birth certificates.

Some of these people who were born in Biafra could have witnessed what happened to their families during the war with the eyes of childhood. And the experience could have remained indelible in their minds. When the war ended, Nigeria did not address this issue of Biafran birth certificates. So, as far as those children born in the Biafran side of Nigeria during the war are concerned, they are Biafrans.

Soon after the war, General Yakubu Gowon introduced his ‘3Rs’ – an acronym for reintegration, rehabilitation and reconstruction. It was his vision of implementing his National Development Plan [NDP], following his “no victor, no vanquished” declaration at the end of the war.

It is 45 years since. Yet, most Igbo who were
either born in Biafra or fought on the side of Biafra
are yet to be reintegrated and fully rehabilitated into the Nigerian
mainstream. Some of them come from the Igbo heartland. Others come from such
riverside areas as the Niger Delta Region. Marginalization which was the
foundational cause of the Nigeria-Biafra war is still very much the problem of
the nation.

Garba Shehu I have been amused,
reading a number of jokes concerning the frequency of the President, Muhammadu
Buhari’s foreign trips.

Questions have been raised about why so many visits, and what are the
benefits Nigeria
is getting?

I will make it clear from the beginning that the critic is entitled to
his and her opinion and nothing said here is intended to silence him or her.

Criticism goes with the territory and as it is often said in a
wisecrack, if you don’t like the heat, get out of the kitchen.

President Muhammadu Buhari came into office under the mantra of
change. While Nigerians are yearning for change, you need someone who will set
up the infrastructure, both at home and abroad for it. President Buhari is busy
doing that.

The change is manifest in where he visits and what he does.

In the delegations accompanying him abroad, President Buhari has
slashed the numbers, bringing them down to a tolerable or the bearable minimum.

He went to the United Nations General Assembly in September with an
unbelievable 32 officials in his delegation. These included his cook, his
doctor and luggage officer.

His predecessor in office
went to the same meeting with 150 officials and family members the year before.

Wherever they are given
government accommodation and feeding, members of President Buhari’s entourage
receive reduced allowances, thereby saving the government some money.

Friday, November 27, 2015

“So far the Buhari administration has done all the wrong things,”
Dehn said by phone from London... Not only has he been incredibly slow in taking any action, when
he finally has taken action on the economic front it’s been diametrically
opposed to sensible policy. That is a major disappointment given expectations
prior to his election.”

--------------------

When Muhammadu Buhari clinched victory in Nigeria’s
presidential elections in March, stocks soared as investors looked to the
former military ruler to reverse decades of economic mismanagement and policy
inertia.Now
hopes have fizzled in his ability to turn around Africa’s
largest economy and oil producer.

Money that flowed into stocks and bonds in the West African
nation, which McKinsey & Co. says could become one of the world’s 20
biggest economies by 2030, is now fleeing as growth prospects diminish along
with oil prices. While Buhari, 72, has prioritized stamping out the graft that
has plagued Nigeria since
independence from Britain
in 1960, policy-making appears as uncertain and haphazard as ever.

“After the initial euphoria, people have become disillusioned,”
Ayodele Salami, who oversees about $500 million of African equities as chief
investment officer of London-based Duet Asset Management Ltd., said by phone.
“He would probably say that he’s being deliberative and cautious. But we
expected more.” Duet’s Africa fund has cut its
investments in the country to about 24 percent of the total from 38 percent in
the last year.

LINGUISTS contend
languages could die if they fail to expand to accommodate new notations. This
was what happened to Latin, which at some point in the history of western
education was the language of scholarship. The English language, which has
grown to conquer the world was, more or less, vernacular and interjection of
Latin in scholarly presentations in England and elsewhere was seen as a
mark of erudition.

As
a young man, I did not know what had happened to Latin. I thought it was still
alive and kicking and I had wished for it to replace French in my first year in
the University when the latter was a compulsory elective course for Theatre
Arts students. It was my first classroom contact with the French language where
everything is either masculine – le or feminine – la, and the learner does not
have a clear guide as to who or what is a man or a woman. When I told my French
lecturer one day that I would prefer Latin to French, she laughed and replied
in French: “ Latin est mort!”

Permit
the long digression. I was only trying to establish that language, including
body language can die if not properly nourished. Everybody was happy when the
Buhari Body Language was introduced into the curriculum of the political
economy on May 29, 2015. It was linguistically efficient and people understood
it without interpretation. Importers of fuel understood it and began
immediately to conduct the business of fuel importation and distribution to
sales outlets in the new language. It was understood, for instance, that fuel could
flow ceaselessly at N87 per litre with or without payment of subsidy. The long
queues at filling stations vanished overnight and there was jubilation in the
land and in the camp of the APC, which promptly appropriated the turn-around as
part the change it promised Nigerians.

In
fact, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, who until recently was publicity secretary of the
APC said nothing was more evident of the change than this strange situation
when the president could get things done without expending effort and scarce
resources. He named the new approach that ensured performance without
corresponding investment, Body Language. He said it was working far better than
anything previously known.

A personal note. I’m not writing from my usual location, comfortably at home on my desktop - currently hospitalized, hopefully released soon.

I’ll be briefer than usual, conserving strength - thankful to maintain daily communication with readers, best as able when less than par.

*Obama and Putin (pix: vox)

Let’s not mince words. Washington is no Russian partner. Its policy is adversarially hostile, notably during the Cold War, especially throughout Putin’s leadership years - a preeminent world leader/peace champion polar opposite rogues running America, perhaps one day able to turn the tide against their hegemonic agenda.

Saving humanity from the scourge of another devastating global war - potential nuclear armageddon - depends on his efforts to prevent it.

By Kennedy Emetulu

The first
part of this piece was written immediately after the deathof the APC candidate in the Kogi
governorship election, Prince Abubakar Audu was first reported. In that piece,
I expressed the view that despite the fact that there is seemingly no clear
constitutional provision or provision in the Electoral Law 2010 to deal with a
situation where a candidate dies during an election, INEC should do a purposive
reading of sections 33 and 36(1) of the Electoral Act to provide a simple,
fair, just and lawful resolution of the problem. Here is how I stated it:

“…I think, even
though it’s not a court of law, INEC should adopt a purposive approach to the
interpretation of the statute, because that is likely how the court will view
it if the matter comes before it. Should it take the matter to court for
interpretation first before it continues with the election? That is a decision
it should take in consultation with its legal officers, but if I were to advise
them, I’d say no need, because the election is already on and the public policy
argument must favour a quick and favourable conclusion, so as not to extend the
tenure of the incumbent unduly, especially where he may likely not be the one
ultimately elected. INEC must always act in the spirit of allowing the people
to choose their Governor as at when due. It is the essence of choice in a
democracy.

“A
purposive reading of the Electoral Act will look at the provisions of Sections
33 and 36(1) and conclude that the mischief the Electoral Act is trying to cure
with these provisions is to avoid a situation where death of a candidate
frustrates the election. So, the oversight of not specifically considering what
happens when a candidate dies during election should not take away the justice
and fairness provided in the law for all situations where a candidate dies before
or during the poll, especially where there is no material change in the
situation between the time before the poll and during the poll when death
occurred”.

Thursday, November 26, 2015

Communique Issued At The End Of The Emergency National Caucus Meeting Of The
Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Held On Wednesday, November 25, 2015.

The National Caucus
of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) met on Wednesday, November 25, 2015 in Abuja wherein it
thoroughly considered the developments arising from the conduct of the
inconclusive governorship election in Kogi state and resolved as follows;

INEC Chairman, Yakubu

1.Completely rejects the decision of INEC
in yielding to the unlawful prompting of a clearly partisan Attorney General of
the Federation (AGF), Mallam Abubakar Malami, to allow APC to substitute a
candidate in the middle of an election, even when such has no place in the
Constitution and the Electoral Act.

2.Insists that with the death of its
candidate, Prince Abubakar Audu, the APC has legally crashed out of the
governorship race as no known law or constitutional provision allows the
substituting of candidates, once the ballot process has commenced.

3.Insists that with the unfortunate death
of Prince Abubakar Audu, the APC has no valid candidate in the election,
leaving INEC with no other lawful option than to declare the PDP candidate,
Capt. Idris Wada as the winner of the election.

RECENTLY Nigerians have been groaning under the heavy burden of
acute fuel scarcity which has hit the country for the third week running. Also
the issue of power which many thought was beginning to improve for the better
has gone bad again thereby leaving behind anguish and lamentations across the
nation.

Interestingly, these vital components of a nation on the
path of recovery were witnessed as soon as Muhammadu Buhari was sworn in as
president last May. Then what was on the lips of many people was that the body
language of the new President was beginning to work.

The moribund refineries, we were also told, started to
operate to a certain level and there was a ‘promise’ that with just few months,
the issue of fuel scarcity and the attendant hardship experienced by Nigerians
will be things of the past.

The argument in many quarters then was that since there was
a new sheriff in town, the people who hitherto used to sit on the progress of
the generality of Nigerians for their selfish interest were afraid of being
hounded into jail, hence the decision to allow the system work again like what
is experienced in many other climes.

The masses who have always been at the receiving end of the
drama and power play that usually play out between the Federal Government and
the all powerful oil marketers heaved a sigh of relief that the days of hurray
were here at last. They thought that the fuel importation which has made even
the government to lose count of how much it spends will be a thing of the past.

But surprisingly, just six months down the line it seems
that we are returning to Egypt
which we thought we had left for good. The scenario has not been anything
different from what it used to be in the past as the two vital indices; fuel
and power have once more become the most elusive commodities one can get.